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Re: [TeXmacs] about some weird behviours


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  • From: Dennis Heuer <address@hidden>
  • To: address@hidden
  • Subject: Re: [TeXmacs] about some weird behviours
  • Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 05:51:39 +0100
thanks for the quick answers. there are still some points open, though.

> > 1. since 1.0.6.12, it seems that the default style doubles the line
> > spacing. i couldn't find an option to turn that off except of choosing
> > no style at all.
> >
> >
> >
> Document->Spacing->Interline separation is your friend.

there is no such path. am i stucked in a mode again (i re-opened texmacs
but nothing changed in 'document'). interestingly, when the bottom of
the page is reached, new lines are pushing up the previous lines until
a certain line spacing is reached and the next page is created. i
find this behaviour quite weird. at least, i don't need it for nothing.

> > >4. when i select some text, i can delete or copy but not overwrite it as
> > >a whole.
>
> This is the (traditional) default under Unix.
> We might include an option for making delete+overwrite the default
> when selecting Windows look and feel.
>

you could also call it the Linux, KDE, GNOME, XFCE, Today's UNIX or
whatever default. don't understand me wrong but i don't want to select
'windows' mode on my linux desktop. possibly 'traditional' and
'desktop' would be better (the traditional mode mainly reflects
the old console times because text tools didn't support the mouse, and
the cursor had to be moved after selecting a sequence to be able to
position it at the target place--and old-days tools didn't have a
clipboard to support copy/paste a more clever way.)

btw., texmacs could profit from the new clipboard protocol of the
freedesktop initiative. it would make sharing (formatted) input easier
between 'modern' apps and texmacs.

> > >5. texmacs supports a nice feature i really like. moving the cursor
> > >close to a differently formatted sequence of text is done in two steps
> > >of which the first is not overtaking the format and the second will do.
> > >a similar behaviour is chosen for crossing outlined areas. though this
> > >makes sense, it is not what is wanted in the common case. it is rather
> > >an option that should be selected by pressing the control key down
> > >while moving the cursor or similar. as it is now, it is rather in the
> > >way and confusing hell a lot.
>
> I think that this is a matter of habits. Yes: TeXmacs is
> a *structured* editor, so this feature is a very central one.
> For consistency, I therefore deliberately opted for this behaviour,
> even if this requires a few hours of training for some people.

i'm sorry that i can't agree but, to me, it seems that rather the habit
is the problem. the question is not if the editor is structured. the
question is if this aspect should be in the way most of the time. there
are some cases when the discussed behaviour is useful. this are those
cases when the text structure is in focus. in the most cases, i.e. when
moving around the cursor or when clicking into the text, the discussed
behaviour is in the way. this is why this behaviour should be activated
intentionally and not all the time. this is rather a question of HCI or
heuristics.

> >3. i often seem to create a new outlined area (paragraph or text
> >block???) without noticing it. this wouldn't be too bad if not i
> >couldn't find a way to combine two outlined areas into one again
> >without having to copy over the content of the one area into the other
> >and deleting it afterwards.
> >
> I never observed this.

as far as i understand, the light-blueish outline shows one block of
specific format/settings (a paragraph with own font settings, a bold
text sequence, etc.). what i don't understand is how to clean up ugly
formatted text again, i.e. how to get two blocks compatible again to
make them one block without copying over the content of one block into
the other. i first tried to just delete the space between the blocks but
that didn't help. then i tried the source view but it doesn't allow me
to delete a definition without deleting its subordinated content too.

for example, i found that there were too many same formatting rules
like <with|par-mode|left|...> in the text. however, i couldn't just
delete the redundant definitions because deleting them deletes
the text block too. also, there are sometimes appending definitions
that i can't get rid off individually, it seems, like <right-flush>
after a text block. i tried to de-select those definitions in the menue
but there is no such 'normalize' option that one could select. every
further selection of an option rather complifies the source further.

> > >6. i tried to work with headers, footers, and pagenumbers but only got
> > >kinds of markers into the text. first they looked like placeholders but
> > >they were only of normal text and even overtaken as is into the pdf
> > >file. because i couldn't find documentation on that, i still don't know
> > >how to work with headers, footers, and pagenumbers.
>
> Yes, I am aware that the user-friendlyness can be improved.

this is good. however, i still don't know how to do it ;) i will
investigate in reading the markup documentation?

> > >8. creating pdf files with any other default or extra font than roman
> > >ended in badly rasterized displaying of the document in a pdf viewer.
> > >
> > This I don't know why it is.
>
> Can be that the corresponding type 1 font is missing on your computer.
> You may download the complete TeXmacs fonts package.

i installed the big font package with the source. i also put the
dejavu ttf-fonts into the fonts/truetype folder (really worth it and
nearly unicode-complete. have a look.) after installation, texmacs
knew of about two fonts more. do i have to activate something to make
texmacs aware of the new fonts? why there are more fonts available in
'format' than in 'document'?

i urge you to support 'modern' infrastructures like freetype and
fontconfig. but also the toolkit's own open and save dialogs (texmac's
dialogs don't show umlauts correctly. the save dialog doesn't like
colons and umlauts in filenames.) same for stack icons and theme
support, etc. the latter both are easier supportable than one may think
(see freedesktop.org).

> Fonts with a type 1 equivalent on your harddisk will be vectorized for sure.

all my fonts are truetype :(

> >10. there seems to be no option to set the title of the document.
> >instead, the title seems to always be the path to the temporary
> >working folder of texmacs. because the title is shown in the window bar
> >of the pdf viewer, this solution is not proper for digital documents
> >sent to third parties like customers or employers.
> >
> >
> >
> I don't think that the title of the PDF viewer's window is
> related in any way to the title of the document in the text.
>
> Rather, it is related to the name of the file which contains
> the document, at least that's how Acrobat Reader behaves on
> my (Linux) machine.

the document was located at a different path (my document folder) than
the shown path. the path in the window bar explicitly targeted to a
temporary version (with a code in the name) in the temporary space of
texmacs.

> >11. texmacs seems to circumvent dialog windows. possibly they could help
> >here or there. always falling back to the reader in the status bar is
> >quite unhandy and often confusing too if the prompt wasn't noticed.
> >
> Edit->Preferences->Interactive questions->In popup windows

many thanks! however, i still have to use the reader. seems that
the current implementation knows only one main dialog for all
cases ;) please polish this up for the look & feel.

i also tried the fullscreen mode but couldn't leave anymore (had to
crash X). there was a context menue available at right-click--but
without context. the entries do not react to clicking on them. there
doesn't even pop up an empty submenue.

ah, and what i really don't like is that texmacs closes with the last
document. there should be just no document to signal that there is no
open document left. however, this is logically different to closing
texmacs. it also forces the user to always first open a new document
before he can close the old document. think of a done work but the next
work to come. the user may want to keep texmacs open while he is
drinking a cup of coffee.

nevertheless, texmacs supports only the 'traditional' ispell. i think
that aspell is compatible. however, after mspell, there is now hunspell,
which shall be the official next-gen spell checker also used by
openoffice. there is also enchant (from the abiword project), which
wraps all these. you may want to have a look at enchant.

i'm still impressed by your work. even if you don't believe it. the
look & feel is just so uncommon...

however,
dennis

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